Blog : Sunlight Foundation

Knight Foundation Seek to Find Out What People Want to Know

by Nisha Thompson Apr 23, 2008 3:34 pm

Via PJNet.org, last week the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Aspen Institute announced that they are funding a $2.3 million study to see if citizens are being provided the information they need in order to participate in a democracy. The goal is to find out is the information needs of communities is being met and to recommend solutions if they are not. According to the Knight Foundation press release:

“The business models we’ve relied on to provide news and information to our communities are stressed and changing. New platforms offer an astounding array of choices, creating the most connected world we have ever known with the greatest volume of available data,” said (Alberto) Ibargüen (Knight Foundation president and CEO), a longtime newspaper executive and former PBS chairman who also chairs the Newseum board. “But as those choices proliferate and as those virtual communities connect us globally, the need for local, reliable, contextual civic information remains and, I believe, is being met less and less effectively.”

I think this is long overdue. The need for transparency in government isn’t just about getting the powers that be to open up, but to also make that information readily available to citizens so they can use it to keep tabs on their representatives. It will be interesting to see what information people feel they need and how they are receiving it. Needless to say, I look forward to the results of this study.

Parliament As A Family Business

by Ellen Miller Apr 22, 2008 4:20 pm

Sunlight has never really thought that it was really good idea for elected officials to have their spouses on their payroll. It just raises too many possible conflict of interest questions. Looks like the European Parliament doesn't think it's a very good idea either.

Although the extent to which family members are employed is unclear, it is a common practice among British MEPs which evolved because of the need to run a political office at home, out of normal office hours.

A group inside the Parliament is currently considering the rules for MEPs and their assistants before a final decision is made by parliament's internal political body. Seems like a little research might be in order.

Hat tip: Scott

Atlanta Declaration on the Freedom of Public Information

by Ellen Miller Apr 22, 2008 1:36 pm

Two months ago, the Carter Center hosted an important meeting -- which has just come to my attention -- to discuss the right to public information throughout the world. President Jimmy Carter chaired the International Conference on the Right to Public Information where 125 dignitaries from 40 countries met to discuss the challenge of establishing the right to information throughout the world, and grapple on how this right can be advanced.

The goals of the conference, as stated in the center's briefing book, were to reflect on the current status of the right to public information, consider the impact access to information has on development and governance, and to explore actions that could advance the implementation of public information laws. At the conclusion of the meeting, the participants collaborated on joint statement, the Atlanta Declaration and Plan of Action for the Advancement of the Right of Access to Information, which the center just published a few weeks ago.

Oregon Copyrights Laws Tells Public You Can’t Have Them!

by Nisha Thompson Apr 22, 2008 12:00 pm

Last week John Wonderlich posted about the ongoing story of the GAO giving exclusive rights to digitalize legislative histories to Thomson West on the Open House Project blog. The government entering a deal with a private company and giving them exclusive rights to public documents creates a situation where the whole point of digitalization is lost. When large amounts of documents are available on the internet in easy to download formats it’s supposed to increase public access but this situation has the opposite effect. Unfortunately this problem isn’t exclusive to the federal government.

Via Boing Boing and Carl Malamud,

“The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.
We've sent Oregon back two letters. The first reviews the law and explains to the Legislative Counsel why their assertion of copyright over the state statutes is particularly weak, from both a common law perspective and from their own enabling legislation.”

Malamud goes on to state that Thomson West has also made copies of these statutes but haven’t received cease and desist letters from Oregon yet (it was stated that West will be receiving letters). Apparently many states have laws that are copyrighted and this begs the question of how appropriate this kind of copyrighting in an internet age is. How can a law that was written for the purpose of serving the general public not be available to them to reproduce?

Abramoff Fox Guarding the Henhouse

by Paul Blumenthal Apr 21, 2008 5:05 pm

More often than not, scandals in Washington run their course: apologies, resignations, jail time, followed by book deals and CNN interviews. But not the Jack Abramoff scandal. The Associated Press gives word that the former deputy chief of staff of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, Robert Coughlin, is being charged for accepting gifts from Abramoff and his law firm as they tried to woo him to join their team.

In court papers filed Monday in federal court in Washington, prosecutors accused Coughlin of providing assistance to a lobbyist and the lobbyist's firm while receiving gifts from the firm and discussing prospective employment there. The lobbyist isn't named but The Associated Press has previously reported that Coughlin was lobbied during the period in question by Kevin Ring, a member of Abramoff's lobbying team who also is under investigation.

New York Times Posts Original Documents

by John Wonderlich Apr 21, 2008 10:06 am

Via freegovinfo (via twitter), the New York Times has posted a story about the close relationship between media figures and the current administration.

From an information perspective, I'm impressed (again) by the New York Times development team, who has devised a way for a video news narrative to have original documentation pop up throughout the presentation. The viewer can proceed on a detour through each original document mentioned, perusing the document's content. The narration can then be restarted.

I often find myself trying to explain the connection between original verifiable sourcing and citizen journalists, whose work is often only validated by the sources it can point to. That's one reason I embed pdfs so often on this site (here, here); there are a ton of original documents that have a bearing on what we're working on, and I don't presume to have all of the answers about what they say.

Now the New York Times isn't making a move into full on citizen journalism (although that would be quite a story; if, say, they posted the entire results of their FOIA on governmentdocs.org). They are, however, showing a certain respect for the viewer's position as an information consumer who may want to verify or look for context. We'll take it, as a start. As James A Jacobs writes:

Together, the audio-visual presentation and the documents are a small model for how newspapers could be using the power of the web to enhance their coverage and utility. I would certainly like to see all 8000 pages online!

Agreed.

Getting to the Bottom of Coconut Road

by Paul Blumenthal Apr 18, 2008 12:10 pm

Do lawmakers really want to get to the bottom of the Coconut Road earmark? It looks more and more doubtful by the minute. The story of Coconut Road is one of those earmark stories where a congressman, Alaska Rep. Don Young, inserted an earmark for a campaign contributor in Florida for a project that the local community, in Florida mind you, not Alaska, did not want. Even worse, the earmark was inserted after the transportation bill it was attached to had passed Congress. Bills can't be signed by the President if they've been edited after passage. That's against the rules, laws, and the Constitution. So yesterday, lawmakers in the Senate decided they were going to pursue action against those who inserted the earmark language after bill passage.

AGA Financial Transparency Report

by John Wonderlich Apr 17, 2008 5:40 pm

In February, the Association of Government Accountants released a report they commissioned Harris Interactive to create, entitiled Public Attitudes Toward Government Accountability and Transprency 2008.

The report and corresponding powerpoint presentation explain government's failure to effectively report on financial management:

"The survey findings reveal that the public perceptions of government accountability and transparency are far from favorable. Identified problems with governments' desire to share information and their competence in actually doing so, has resulted in a system at federal, state and local levels that disappoints and breeds mistrust. The implication is clear--traditional forms of communicating financial information to taxpayers are not working."

A detailed survey and statistical and demographic explanations back up their conclusions on public perception of accountability and transparency: "Government at all levels is failing to meet the needs of its citizens with regard to financial management reporting. There is a large 'expectations gap.'"

While this survey applies specifically to financial reporting from the government, the conclusions are likely true across government. If traditional reporting mechanisms are failing, that leaves digital technology to help us develop mechanisms of real trust and accountability. See Section 3 of the report; What the Public Wants: "A significant portion of the population is searching online for information on how the government is generating and spending money."

(AGA Page, Survey Paper, Powerpoint Presentation )

Illinois is now an OpenBook

by Nisha Thompson Apr 17, 2008 4:31 pm

(Hat tip to State Agency Database Highlights)

Illinois has a new database for state contracts and campaign contributions. OpenBook is a great new site where you can search by contract holder or contributor. When you search for either the results will show you two columns. The first shows if the company or person has any state contracts and the second is what campaign contributions they have made. This site allows people to see if a relationship could exist between contracts and campaign contributions. It is simple to use and the easy to understand, which is pretty impressive for a government database. Kudos Illinois!

GSA FACA Database and Reform

by John Wonderlich Apr 17, 2008 4:07 pm

(from the Open House Project blog)

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently held a hearing on reforming the laws that govern the creation of Federal Advisory Committees. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) governs the creation and disclosure of advisory committees. This is no small legislative or logistical task, since there are about 65,000 people appointed to federal advisory committees. The issues surrounding this law are new to me, and I'm also excited to find that the General Services Administration (GSA) runs a database of Federal Advisory Committee information, available here, which includes advisory committee charters, members, transcripts, and other information.

While there doesn't appear to be any option to bulk download or API access, the database should be potentially combinable with other data sources, and should prove to be a rich collection of information, since people appointed to advisory committees are often business leaders or governmental employees, who have a stake in the subject matter they're advising on.

This situation presents a strong potential for conflicts of interest, which congress correctly responded to by instituting a disclosure regime, demanding transparency and accountability of the committees and their participants. The problem is that these disclosure requirements are far from perfect, and many loopholes exist that allow advisory committees to skirt the disclosure requirements. For FACA loopholes and reform ideas, see this GAO document, or this expert testimony from Sidney Shapiro, or this testimony from the GSA, who runs the FACA database.

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